Working the Lode (21 page)

Cormack shoved the cartographer by the shoulder. “Go, stand by, and eavesdrop like you’re just looking for—”

Quartus brightened. “Beaver sign?”

“Joaquin!” Zelnora called to the highwayman who now headed their way after seeing the others off. “What’s going on?”

Joaquin waved casually. “Nothing, Señorita. Just men acting like boys.” He jammed his slouch hat onto his head but appeared agitated, obviously in a rush to strike out after his boys. “I will be over tomorrow morning to take you to your claim,
si?”

“Si,”
Cormack agreed vaguely, watching Joaquin swagger off to his horse. His next question spilled from his mouth before he had time to think. “What were you discussing about Ward Brannagh?”

With his back to the Americans, Joaquin paused, stock-still. He turned tightly, and his smile was just as artificial. “We must have been saying
braña
. The summer pastures in the mountains where we like to make camp.”

Saluting in a military fashion, he mounted his richly caparisoned horse. He rode steadily off into the redwoods as the three Americans looked blankly at each other.

Chapter Twenty-one

They were ambushed on their way to Sonora.

They had struck a rich lead at their new claim. Within the first week they were washing five hundred dollars in dust a day. The waters were low, and the bars were exposed. True to his word, Joaquin had sent six capable men from Hermosillo to assist them, and they worked like greased lightning, being accustomed to the boiling heat of midday. Why, just one day alone when Zelnora was going to use the necessary behind a boulder, she stubbed her toe on a large stone. It was a solid nugget weighing about thirty pounds. This was along the main path between Jamestown and Sonoran Camp, and hundreds of people had traveled through without seeing it!

Having to ensure the word didn’t get out, as the entire population of Tuolumne County would be pouring in hoping to discover more giant nuggets, they decided to strike out to Sonoran Camp to find Eddie Tremaine, the assayer with the best rates. Zelnora knew the assayers would just toss it into the melting pot along with the common gold, and as much as she wanted to keep the giant nugget, it was more imperative to have her own money to furnish the San Francisco house. She had discovered that the lot her fiancé had purchased for six thousand dollars was now worth forty-five thousand, an astounding inflation rate. She wanted to return safely to San Francisco before her colossal nugget couldn’t even furnish her with a dining table.

So they packed their gold in buckskin bags, leaving Quartus with Zel’s “peashooter” to oversee the Sonorans. Cormack wanted two of the Sonorans to accompany them, but they made an excuse that they were certain to make a big strike that day. So the couple rode across a table mountain covered with the debris of former volcanic eruptions, forced to dismount for a few miles when the ground reverberated beneath them as they passed over concealed craters. Boulders lay half buried in the earth like a field of pumpkins.

Zelnora was happier than she had ever been—happier, to be sure, than her first months wed to Barton Sparks. She’d imagined a glorious future with that handsome fellow who was such a shining star under the tutelage of Ward Brannagh. Then Barton had actually sailed away to be rid of her. What had appeared at first to be a fatal blow to a childless woman of more than thirty years was now evidently the beginning of her grand adventure in California. Browned by the sun, heartier and stronger than ever—mounted on her horse wearing men’s leather pantaloons! A wide-brimmed sombrero clapped onto her head—Zelnora smiled and thought,
I like this wild and barbarous life. I will leave it with regret.

It must have been her elation and the relative coolness of the morning air that caused her to dare ask, “Cormack. Don’t you think when we return to San Francisco you’ll want to go back to doctoring?”

His silence told her she had erred in mentioning the subject, and they plodded ahead wordlessly. They were descending into a mountain valley fringed with a belt of redwood timber, a bucolic open meadow where coveys of quail whirred and skittered through the dead grass. Zelnora risked a few glances at the side of Cormack’s face, and he didn’t look tense, only thoughtful.

So she stumbled on. “I heard that false men of medicine are everywhere. Fellows putting up posters as doctors are also selling oil and candles. One doctor I heard of in San Francisco is actually an Italian wigmaker.”

“I’ve heard of those mountebanks,” Cormack said hotly. “Even Dr. Marsh, as tasty as his
aguardiente
is, is an amateur physician without a license. He charges money for the simplest thing anyone can read in a mothering handbook. He don’t know fat cow from poor bull.” He was quiet for a few more moments then said in a calmer tone, “I got a medical degree from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, that’s true. You may have wondered where a mountain man got such book learning.”

He paused as if expecting a response, so Zelnora encouraged him. “You do often use big words. Not that a mountain man shouldn’t,” she quickly added.

Cormack actually grinned a little. “You couldn’t get into Columbia without knowing a few big words. Well, I have no hankering to go back to that life. I like studying sign, and you can see where I’m proud of your metallurgy learning. It goes against my nature, some of the ethics that physicians are forced to uphold, or put on a face like they’re upholding. Hippocratic Oath, bear’s ass.”

Zelnora smiled at the notion Cormack would use Quartus’ most treasured curse. “What sort of ethics don’t you agree with?”

Already he seemed more remote, his voice wandering thinly. “Well, if a fellow is well nigh to going under already, say with an arm or leg blown clean off…Hush.” He reined up his horse, sitting erect as he gazed at a distant point in a sequoia grove. “Keep your eyes skinned.” He reached for his long rifle.

“What is it?” Zelnora saw nothing. Not a puff of wind rustled the tiniest branch or needle.

“Something is breaking the leaves a-snapping like California shells,” he whispered. “Have your rifle at the ready.”

They cantered casually down the rise into the bowl of the valley, Cormack with his Colt’s loosed in his belt and his scalp knife handy. Zelnora thought she knew where Cormack indicated danger was, as a covey of quail was streaking it the opposite direction. Sure enough, just as they had passed parallel to the spot, Cormack shouted “Yep!” to his skilled beast, wheeled it about, and raised his long rifle at about five mounted banditos that came exploding from the grove.

How had he known? Zelnora was not nearly as prepared, and as she’d never discharged the Hawken before, found how difficult it could be. Loud was the war shout as Cormack sent a ball flying at the vaqueros, and she could barely lift her weapon!

“There’re five of them, let’s fly and rub out as many as we can,” Cormack instructed her, with his usual quick resolve in cases of peril. He sent a shot directly in the vaquero’s faces, knocking one off his horse. The Mexicans had only pistols, so they let no shot fly as they came into the grassy bowl in a zigzag manner so as not to present a steady mark. This was well nigh to impossible, galloping with no reins and hefting a seven pound piece to your shoulder! But in her fear Zelnora succeeded, miraculously managing to hit a mark in the leg—it looked like she’d blown the lower leg clean off, and there was one more vaquero off his mount.

The three remaining Mexicans discharged a ringing pistol volley, bullets thudding into the timber and cutting branches near them. Cormack’s revolver spoke the first word of reply just as a Mexican’s ball smacked into his beast’s hock. Cormack’s shot went wild as the beast collapsed on its side, smashing the buckskin bags of gold that included Zelnora’s giant nugget.

Cormack athletically dove from the saddle, rolling then leaping to his feet. The vaqueros rushed like little blurry demons, one dismounting to grab the bags of gold while the other two held Cormack off with their gaudily adorned, dancing beasts. Zelnora’s own square-built bay, unaccustomed to gunfire, skittered so uncontrollably she could scarcely hit the side of a vaquero’s horse, much less a man. And her brain, unaccustomed to keeping her eyes skinned so acutely, could not decide who or what to aim at next—the men thrusting their muzzles at Cormack, or the man now mounting again and galloping off with the gold.

Discharging her piece at one of the men threatening Cormack, she succeeded only in striking the stirrup strap, and perhaps a flank, sending up a spray of blood. The enraged rider twirled about, and the muzzle of a pistol barrel gaped before her eyes. It seemed that Cormack sent a ball flying at the Mexican just as he shot her.

She felt no pain, merely a hot liquid spreading over her shoulder, and a faintness as though she’d just guzzled half a whiskey bottle at once. The corners of her vision dulled and darkened, so all she saw was the vaquero’s face before her in a small illuminated sphere. Cormack’s ball evidently passed through the bandit’s lungs, and his throat began to swell as blue blood rose and turned his face livid.

The remaining horseman followed the one with the gold back into the sequoias as Cormack sent another shot flying after them. Zelnora toppled from her mount.

Chapter Twenty-two

Gripping the injured woman to his chest—a tourniquet of buckskin stopped the bleeding after he’d dug the bullet out with his scalping knife—Cormack flew into Sonoran Camp on Zelnora’s horse and carried her to the best bed in town. This “corral” consisted of a dozen enclosures with cloth ceilings next to a billiard room. He sent a few lounging merry Andrews and a toreador he was acquainted with to sound the alarm for Joaquin. There was no point in calling the town “doctor” to care for Zelnora while he scouted for Joaquin in the
pulquerias
and barrooms. “Doctor” Leblanc was actually a tightrope walker from France whose usual work was as auctioneer hawking pickles.

The ball had lodged in Zelnora’s deltoid, luckily avoiding the bone and jugular or cephalic veins, so the only thing to do now was keep her still and disinfect the wound with the best whiskey he could find.

The assayer Eddie Tremaine closed his shop upon hearing they had been robbed and came to sit with Cormack. He admired the scalp Cormack had lifted from the desperado who had shot Zelnora. Cormack had tied it to the cinch ring of Zelnora’s saddle out front where he’d picketed her horse, to warn and also to draw Joaquin to him. On the street, “Doctor” Leblanc bawled, “And I’m only bid one dollar for a dozen mixed pickles that cost five dollars in the States?”

“Doo!” shouted a Dutchman.

“Have I any advance on two dollars and a half?”

“Dos y medio!”

“Trois!”

Tremaine asked Cormack, “Did you recognize any of those pistoleros who assaulted you?”

Cormack shook his head dolefully. Zelnora breathed easy, and the volume of whiskey he had poured on her wound and down her gullet assured her relative comfort. Her fever did not appear to be high enough for alarm. “Not a sign. I can’t imagine Valenzuela taking kindly to others overrunning his territory. He might give those pistoleros free passage out of this world on the California ‘Lynch and Company Fast Line.’”

“Right! You are on good terms with Valenzuela and his men—”

“Valenzuela only,” Cormack corrected. “Three-Fingered Jack, Feliz, and the rest, why, they’re no account anyways you lay your sight. And even then, I’m not so sure about Valenzuela. Tremaine, who’s to say it wasn’t Valenzuela himself who sent those pistoleros to rob us? Look at it. He gets us to mine his river then sits back when we come here loaded down with heaps of gold.”

But like many in Sonoran Camp, Tremaine was loath to admit that their bandit hero Valenzuela had a black heart. “Don’t be absurd, Bowmaker. At the very most, you’ve been acting as Valenzuela’s agent. How does it behoove him to rob his own agents? And you’ve been doctoring poor Antonia. Why would he deprive his daughter’s doctor of fair pay for his work? What would he do if you had been killed this morning—go to that ass Leblanc? What would he do, give Antonia some Chinese sugar or bad brandy for her consumption?”

Tremaine made a good point. Cormack didn’t want to think that a man he had recently frigged, kissed—whose semen he had tasted—would cross him like that. Sure, if Joaquin had committed even half of the murderous acts attributed to him, he had been a pretty vile hoss. But his dealings with Cormack and Zelnora, as of late, had seemed on the level. Why would he expose to them his lurid leanings, his desire to lick another man’s prick, his hankering to gobble Cormack’s balls while Zelnora watched? If Cormack revealed those cravings to his band of pistoleros, well, Joaquin might as well say hard doings to his topknot right now. They would never allow such a deviant to lead them.